


Diamond Dust and Opal Ashes: Rose Quartz

by Quetzalcoatl_is_my_Momma



Series: Diamond Dust and Opal Ashes [1]
Category: ARK: Survival Evolved elements taken from game, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition (?), Accidental Bonding, And a Dragon Bloodbender, And a Dragon Waterbender, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ashe Needs A Hug, Ashe an Control Crystals, Ashe can create Kryptonite Crystals on himself, Ashe is a literal half-human half-animal, Ashe is basically a Dragon Earth-bender, Ashe's Ember Crystal Wyvern gene is actually the Night Fury Part, Basically he's fair game and everyone wants to capture him, Batman is an asshole, Conner needs a hug, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Does it count as Firebending if it's a plasma blast?, Egg-Stealing, Gemstone Meanings, Gen, Geokinesis in it's Purest Form, I mean can it be a Baby if it's still in the egg?, I mean it's a crystal yeah?, Kidnapping, Language of Crystals, Last Of Your Kind vibes, Memory Loss, Morally Ambiguous Character, Near Death Experiences, Night Terrors, Not Batman friendly, Not Superman Friendly, Parental Ashe, Rated 'M' for now, Sort Of, Suspended Animation, That's what Ashe would be, The Team just Wants to Talk, Trust Issues, Were-Beast Ashe, if you crossed Crystal Wyverns from Ark: Survival Evolved with a Night Fury and made it half human, so he isn't protected by the Metahuman Acts or the laws for aliens on earth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-24 13:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30073080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quetzalcoatl_is_my_Momma/pseuds/Quetzalcoatl_is_my_Momma
Summary: Trapped like a bug in amber in hidden caverns beneath Santa Prisca, he lies in deep sleep from a time when the Man and Beast of his blood were allies.A creature named Ashe awakens to a group of young empowered humans and human-like individuals.Gaps in his memory and a precious charge to nurture upon freeing himself, Ashe finds that the little he does remember is gone and he may be the last of his kind. In a new world filled with Humans different from those he once knew, Ashe faces captivity, distrust, isolation, and situations where he is depicted as a monster. As Ashe searches for clues to his missing memories and heritage, his charge is stolen and he's forced to seek help from those who want to capture him, the Justice League. Despite the odds Ashe forms an unlikely alliance with them and their proteges, the Young Justice Team he does what he can to help those who distrust him at every turn, instinctively feeling that his kind, whatever they were, and the Humans are not supposed to harm one another. But Ashe is starting to wonder if Humans are truly the ally here... or the enemy.There's only so much a confused hybrid can take before his instinctive faith in Humans begins to dim and snuff out.
Relationships: Ashe (Original Male Character) & Kon-El | Conner Kent, Ashe (Original Male Character) & Original Female Character, Ashe (Original Male Character) vs Justice League, Ashe (Original Male Character) vs The Team, pairings undecided - Relationship
Series: Diamond Dust and Opal Ashes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212563
Kudos: 5





	1. Prologue: Rose-Quartz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theme music for this chapter:
> 
>  _Desmatter_ By: Really Slow Motion & Giant Apes

**_Time:_** 10,000 BCE

 ** _Area:_** Fertile Crescent

**_ Age: Seven Summers_**

_Ashe… could hear his heart beating._

**_Thump-thud…_ **

**_Thump-thud…_ **

**_Thump-thud…_ **

_Slowly, oh so slowly like the breathings of the Queen Alpha in her long hibernations. He felt warm… very warm, and he could hear the gentle sloshing of the water around him as he slept in the waves of the Grotto. They were a dying breed- with the ability to use the Blood-Benders', Waterbreather's, and the Stormfliers' abilities, the other Nests always felt threatened, and with a pact made with one of the Human Alphas resulting in Ashe's existence they felt even more so. The hybrid rumbled and rolled to the side; no matter, let the Queen Beta see to their attempted assaults when she awoke- he and the other Warriors would fly out to defend the Nest and Thunder with their very lives. Until then though, Ashe would sleep. As a low purr echoed throughout the Nest, blending with the hundreds that belonged to the Wyverns he called family both old and young, strong and weak. With their unified slumber the crystal spires all around him ebbed and flowed in their lights to his breathing. Despite being used to this, even under his scale-plated eyelids he could see the bright pulse and dim of the crystals that made up the Thunder's nesting grounds._

_Ashe slept…_

**_Age: Fourteen Summers_ **

_Something was wrong._

_Queen Alpha had awoken ahead of her next Clutch-Lay._

_The Ancients, Queen Beta, and the Humans are worried, and Ashe lets out a low growl in his Nest Tongue that blends with the Esses and the Drakes own concerns. He switches to Man Tongue and asks the King Alpha if the Thunder's Queen Alpha will be alright. The Human only furrows the flesh of his brow in worry before replying that he didn't know._

_The Nest was in a state of stasis then. If the Queen Alpha is awoken and has not produced a Crystal Wyvern Heir in the Clutch-Lay, it means she is sick and unable to produce the new Clutch of Heirs._

_A sick Queen Alpha means a weakened Nest and a weakened Thunder._

_They are vulnerable…_

_ **Age: Sixteen Summers** _

_The Queen Alpha looks into his eyes with her one great faceted eye. She is weak and her old heart beats slower and slower each day._

_Then, before the Atrium of Wyverns and Humans, she names **Ashe** the new Heir, the first **King** of the Wyverns in their Thunder._

**_"You are the bridge between our Thunder and the Human Clans,"_ ** _she rasped in the Man Tongue. **"The FIRST in the promise of peace we Gemheart Wyverns have seen since even before I was hatched…"** she groaned before continuing, her voice rising a bit more so the others gathered could hear her. **"Our kind is destined to fall to the other Thunders, my children… Do not follow me into the Skies above quietly. Do not let them rip your wings and tear your throats out in the mud under our claws and under our ally's feet… If you are to follow me, do so with your teeth bared, wings buffeting your enemies, and your elements shredding their scales from their bones. Drag them with you, and drop their spirits into the Pits where the belong."** As the gathering roared or cheered their support, the dying Queen Alpha roller her eye to the young hybrid. " **Lead them, Ashe… First… and last of the King Alphas…"**_

_As the Queen Alpha breathed her last, the entire Atrium bowed to the halfling, the crystal spires all around them glowing brighter before the Queen Alpha's body sent a rushing pulse of light towards the creature and being absorbed into his body._

_Over Ashe's face grew a mask of glacier-blue Wyverngem, glowing in it's skull-like visage with a crown of horns framing his brow over his own. Over his torso a plating of scales overlapped, producing the same white-blue glow. At the outer edges of his wings, crystals in the form of razor-sharp blades grew. The fins on his tail become more streamlined and the area over his heart glows glows a brilliant stardust blue._

_And he felt a bone-deep hum in his being… one that whispered of shaking the skies with his wings and raising the crystals from the peaks of mountains…_

_Ashe roars, and it shakes the Atrium's very foundations._

**_Age: Seventeen Summers_ **

_Blades of glacier-blue Fluorite glow in the night as the battle wages around them, the blurs of glowing bodies causing disorientation everywhere someone unused to the display looked._

_Ashe snarls as an enemy Human atop a Blood-Bender levels a grin at him while the Red Wyvern roars his challenge at the half-breed. Ashe answers in kind, flipping his blades in his clawed hands before flying at the duo with a snarl. In moments, the enemy is falling to the ground, jagged blades of diamond protruding from their flesh as their lives vanish from their eyes._

_Hearing a powerful roar from across the battlesky, Ashe turns to see a large, black and storm-purple Queen Beta barreling her way forwards. Her black scales glitter in the moonlight as she roars her rage, her white-blue eyes burning as she spews a bolt of plasma-fire from her maw that detonates in a shockwave of blue-purple-white and wisps of gold. Ashe turns and focuses on the light of the moon on his wings, the power of the Queens that came before flowing in his flesh and blood._

_His form grows, his bones crunch and shift even as his guts slosh about to move or grow to accommodate his expanding bulk._

_Ashe, in the form of the first King Alpha Wyvern, roars his answer, and it shakes the skies._

_A storm gathers and lightning caresses the crystal protrusions on his spine and crown. Gathering them up in his maw, Ashe snaps his jaws shut before they spring open, spewing a blast of fire and lightning from his mouth in a concentrated beam of plasma-fire. It collides with the Queen Beta of the Stormfliers, sending her now lifeless, smoking husk tumbling to the rocky craigs below._

_As Ashe turns to assist his Thunder, who are fighting with renewed vigor at one of the rival Thunders' leaders downed, something pierces his plated chest._

_An arrow._

_A_ poisoned _arrow._

_Turning to see who had shot it, he spies a pretty emerald green female Waterbreather and her female Human rider, of whom holds the bow that shot the arrow._

_In a whiteout of sudden pain, the First and Last lets out a roar and falls, shifting from his battle-borne form to his Wyverngem-masked one. Through pained eyes laced with tears of rage and anguish, Ashe watches his Thunder and their Riders bellow in a sense of shared agony before launching a final assault._

_Ashe sees his mother, a human with hair as dark as the night and riddled with his father's sapphire-blue shed scales, atop his father as they rip apart the Human and Waterbreather that shot him from the sky._

_He sees the Ancients rise from the Nest below, their old bones creaking as they stand by no longer and fight with the young blood- the old and new would perish together._

_Ashe bellowed in anguish as he crashed down at the mouth of the Grotto, just in time to see the Waterbreathers and Blood-Benders begin to shatter the remainder of the unhatched eggs of the Esses and Drakes, the bodies of the young and infantile lying in piles just behind them._

_As Mother Night spread her wings to guide him to the stars, a sudden flare of light raced over the crystals marking the interior of the Nest. It knocked the very last egg off its alcove before the Waterbreathers and Blood-Benders got to it, the ripple of light acting as a barrier to roll the egg towards Ashe's prone body._

_Once it reached the young dying King, he weakly grabbed it and pulled it close to his chest, preparing to protect even a tiny hope of his Nest and People surviving. If that failed, he would make sure the wyrmling inside the shell did not die alone._

_Spears of crystal, all pulsing different colors, stabbed through the ground, their points gleaming in the moonlight._

_The ground under Ashe's body fell away and he curled around the egg, forcing his wounded wings to curl around them both._

_The blood of his Nest spattered the crystals around him, and Ashe felt as if he were being encased in a warm barrier. It was as if his father's wings and is mother's arms were wrapped around him._

**«You are not meant to die, First and Last…»** _many voices whispered around him hissing, crooning, talking in both Nest Tongue and Man Tongue._ _Ashe clutched the egg closer, and the last thing he saw was the final Drake and Rider pair of his Nest and People falling in a rain of blood and shattered scales, taking the last of the Blood-Benders with them._

_It was his mother and his father…_

_A single tear rolls down Ashe's scaly cheek before splashing onto the egg in his grasp._

_Then, everything went out in a field of white as the light of the crystals enveloped both him and his precious, self-appointed charge, dragging him into a deep well of ink and shadow._

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_And would be ten millennia until Ashe reawakened..._


	2. Chrysoprase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Team discovers a secret beneath Isla Santa Prisca, and Ashe awakens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme for this chapter:
> 
>  _Mighty Rivers Run_ By: Globus

**_Time: Unknown_ **

**_Location: Santa Prisca Caves_ **

_He was in pain. His head pounded and is muscles ached. His wings felt trapped. He couldn't breathe. Everything was dark, he was cold, scared, and alone._

_A sound like a drop of water hitting the surface of a lake echoed in his ears. He slowly stirred, his scaly limbs from elbow to clawed fingertips bringing a faintly registered item in his arms closer to his plated chest. Scaled eyelids fluttered, their reluctance to open putting up a valiant fight and urging him to fall back asleep._

**_«Awaken, First and Last,»_ ** _the sounds, voices, hisses and croons and growls and roars shifted the unseeing gaze in a kaleidoscope of colors under ice-blue scaled lids._

**_«AWAKEN!»_ **

_Power seemed to swell up over the sleeping First and Last. It pushed against the confines of his prison and then exploded upwards in a dull roar of ancient wings and endless winds. It was so powerful that it made the world overhead tremble and sink in, forming a pathway right to his enclosure._

=◊=

**…Thirty-five minutes earlier…**

=◊=

On the surface of Santa Prisca, just as they were wrapping up their mission, Miss Martian froze, as did Superboy. Kaldur'Ahm, Aqualad, noticed his friend's pause and ventured back to their side from Robin's. "Superboy, what-?" "Shhh!" the clone of Superman shushed the Atlantean before tilting his head towards the flaming factory… or rather, the ground just under it. Blue eyes went wide as they made out the sound again- a sudden hiccup, a thump… **_a heartbeat_**. Wide blue eyes snapped towards the inferno in alarm before the young hero leapt for the blaze without another word while Miss Martian filled in the gap with a shocked gasp before turning towards their leader urgently. "There's someone still in there!"

Aqualad's eyes widened before he whipped out one of his Water Bearers and summoned the water in the atmosphere that was misting over the island and brought it down on the blaze. "You said there were two tunnels in the mines, Robin!" the Atlantian barked sharply. "Where did the other one lead to?!" It wasn't easy to get the protégé of the Dark Knight by surprise. The boy couldn't form a coherent response. Before he could speak Kaldur was already barking orders. "Miss Martian, clear the rubble as carefully as you can. Superboy, dig until you fin-!"

Before the Atlantean could finish the order the ground seemed to _breathe_ , a massive mound composed of rock, smoke, dust, mud and still-dry dirt under what remained of the factory heaved upwards by two or three meters before collapsing with a bestial, monstrous groan echoing from the depths. As the rock and rubble fell back down, and so did the team dropping everyone who was unable to fly down into the depths below, an air-shaking _roar_ made everyone's bones vibrate.

Crystal structures of varying color, size, and shape shot out from the walls of the hole, narrowly missing the falling teenagers before those that could fly or levitate were able to do so. Superboy grunted before he embedded a hand into one of the larger protrusions, halting his fall. As his hand's strength made the silver-pink crystal shatter a bit. Robin had used his grapple gun to attach to one of the lower leveled formations one colored a strange turquoise blue, Aqualad and Kid Flash having been helped by Miss Martian to their own perches, rippling deep blue crystals that fluctuated with what looked like inner lightning and fire. The yellow-clad speedster's mouth was opening and closing like a fish's before his voice finally pierced the air.

"What in the _fresh_ _hell_ was that?!" he shrieked as he looked for any other surprises. Aqualad's eyes narrowed. "It was a sinkhole… but not where it should be… apparently Santa Prisca has secrets of it's own…"

Kaldur blinked in bewilderment before he ran a webbed hand over the crystal, which he realized formed a winding stairwell- in awe and sharing a glance with his teammates. "This is Earth Magic of the purest and most advanced level… But usually only Atlantians of the Neptunia Familia could do that." The Boy Wonder nodded grimly. "And they had been wiped out in wars millennia ago from what Batman's told me about your people... so who is doing this... _what_ is doing this?" the walls shook once more, but gentler this time. The walls shook and dust trailed to fall past them into the glowing, crystal-ridden tunnel below.

Superboy blinked, eyebrows furrowing as he ran a hand over the smooth pinkish-white crystal. It pulsed lightly, and if the clone looked closer, he could see it wasn't only a kink-white sheen, but opalescent. The mini rainbow of colors was hypnotizing, but now in a bad way.

"Whatever it is," Miss Martian said haltingly, pulling the clone from his thoughts. She paused, brown eyes narrowing in concentration. "It- _they_ , feel… odd… the mentality is that of both human and something else- an earth animal, maybe an amalgamation of earth animals. It feels no older than maybe I appear to be in age…" glancing up at the Atlantean and his second in command's perch, the group of teenagers let out varying levels of audible groans when they saw that the younger of the Gotham Dynamic Duo had already vanished.

"Well," Aqualad said in resignation. "Let's go after him, I suppose."

=◊=

Robin stared at the center of the fire opal-colored room, his breath misting at the fading chill within when he had landed. The giant spire of crystal had captured the thirteen-year-old's attention the moment he had landed within, and the being frozen inside the crystal even more so. Robin stepped forwards to observe the being more clearly. The being's lips had been drawn back into a pained grimace and within its prison it looked like it was straining against something with it's wings even as they were curled protectively around it. "It looks like a cross between a weird dragon and a human," Robin said to himself in awe as he backed away from the monolith. The creature… looked human, just with the extra or replaced parts that were more reptile-slash-bat, though it's eyes still appeared eternally exhausted, as if fighting a war that would never be over. Blood frozen in time marred it's scaly skin, and a single arrow was pierced through its chest just shy of its heart would be if it were fully human.

It seemed to be looking at him, the being's silver hair fading to midnight almost animated in it's strange, suspended state. "Who are you?" the Boy Wonder asked softly.

"What are you doing?! Why are you talking to it?!"Kid Flash asked incredulously as he and the others dropped into the chamber. Superboy's gaze turned sour and he snapped around to glare at the yellow speedster from his former activity looking at the creature. " _Him_ , not _it_."

"Alright, fine… well what even is _he_?" Kid Flash grunted, still in an offensive stance should the creature break free.

A small crack formed with the speedster's words, making him jump, but that was all.

The clone was staring at the creature once more, unable to make a comment. Miss Martian pursed her lips in worry before looking towards Robin, who was scanning around the monolith. "This crystal is just about as old as the first Ice Age… at least that’s what I'm gathering from the readings on the dirt and rock around it." Robin whistled, tapping at his gauntlet eagerly before he paused. Looking up at the being's posture, as if it were protecting itself. _This also means he's he's been in there for thousands of years,_ he thought numbly _._ He couldn't imagine what that must have felt like, to only be semi-aware and to watch the world go by as the dirt gradually swept over your prison, only to be unearthed as the walls around you falls in fire and dirt. "He looks like he's shielding something…" the Boy Wonder tacked on after observing the posture at a profile angle again. "He was trapped here," Kaldur said quietly.

"Maybe… he was trying to protect something, or someone." The Atlantean looked at the posture of the being's wings before heaving a sigh. "That’s all well and good," Kid Flash said, zipping around the crystal while picking up a chunk of the spire for a souvenir. "But does it tell us how to get him _out_ , or maybe contact the League to bring him back with us…?"

* * *

It came suddenly and with no warning at all, as if a giant glass pane was suddenly broken, the sound of shattering crystal and sudden rushing water filled the hidden caverns of the lower cavern. the young male who appeared to be just reaching adulthood- by human standards- spilled from a monolithic spire, swept away by the wave of glowing blue-silver water. The first thing that Ashe hears is the screams of five extremely surprised youths as they are swept along by his awakening. And that sets him off like nothing else- the voices of potential enemies around what was _his_. With a snarl, his eyes snap open and his clawed fingers tighten around the object in his grasp < ** _eggeggeggeggprotectyouryouNG-!_** > before he spreads his glowing wings, motes of glowing crystal floating about like stardust in the cavern before he spreads his stance and glares at his attackers.

The crystal mask, something they had missed since the coloring of the crystal and the way it was formed split his image so bad from the outside, quickly changed from the stardust-bout to an unforgiving and ominous lightning-plasma violet.

_He had to protect his Young… he had to protect the Youngling…!_

But Ashe paused. Somethin in him nagged that harming these humans wasn't the right thing to do, no matter how _in_ human one of them smelled.

So, with a hiss in warning, Ashe shifted into his King Alpha form, roared, and shot into the air, his glowing wing membrane, underbelly, and tail marking him as he flew out from the island and off to parts unknown, leaving the intruders to splutter and flail (save for one who was watching the being fly away in shocked awe and disbelief) in the waters of ten millennia in slumber.

**Author's Note:**

> In the beginning.... There was a Nest.  
> In this Nest... there was a Thunder.  
> Leading this Thunder to a War of Rose Quartz... was the First and Last.
> 
> The First and Last has Fallen... but he is not gone.


End file.
